Chinese Weapons Surface in Afghanistan
Newsmax ^ | 10/21/07 | staff

American and British officials have complained to China that sophisticated, newly manufactured Chinese weapons have been seized in Afghanistan.

The weapons include anti-aircraft guns, landmines, rocket-propelled grenades, and even the HN-5, a Chinese copy of the Russian SA-7 surface-to-air missile.

The weapons that have been found had their serial numbers removed to cloak their intermediate source.

High-ranking U.S. officials have accused Iran of received weapons from China and smuggling them into Afghanistan, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Transnational Threats Project.

But Afghan President Hamid Karzai, not surprisingly, questions that link. His country has strong ties with Iran and Iranian animosity toward the Taliban, who in 1998 murdered Iranian diplomats and Shiite civilians in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

“Whatever the source of the weapons, given the close operational ties between al-Qaida and the Taliban, the latter’s possession of such arms, especially the HN-5s, is disturbing,” the CSIS report states.

Terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, have tried several times in the past — unsuccessfully — to use shoulder-fired guided missiles to target civilian and military aircraft.

“Given the lethality of these weapons, the possible know-how of terrorists to transport them, and the close ties between al-Qaida and the Taliban,” the report notes, “the appearance of sophisticated surface-to-air missiles in Afghanistan should be of concern to everybody.”